Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: xaccrocheur on December 07, 2005, 09:55:21 AM
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Hi, just wanted to point what started as a comment (http://www.amiga.org/gallery/photo.php?lid=1352&com_id=49003&com_rootid=49003&com_mode=flat&com_order=0#comment49003), and ended up in "my own private confession, and public apology to the walker project team"
Mind you, it's a quite old hat. No news in this rant, just the expression of my sadness. Feel free to ignore it, as we all did with the walker.
Walker prototype
Everytime I see the walker some part of my body gets cold.
I vividly remember when it was unveiled. The way I see it, WE Amigans killed it.
It was a GREAT machine. It would have been the last really KickAss 68k platform, introducing the cross-platform HW compatibility with the PCI bus, that were amazingly overlooked (is that the right word ? I mean that nobody seemed to care - even me - about this bus, when it was THE THING !) In fact, it's only when the first PCI busboards were produced, WAY after that, such as the prometheus, that I realised my mistake : Those guys@Amiga had figured it all !
The case was *great*, it was the early rendering of what a friendly 'puter should look like way before the IMac, AND it was expandable as hell, unlike the IMac, already modern-equipped (CD-Rom) , And hey, it EXISTED !
And we ranted it away, had some good laughs (remember "try it on the floor" ? I can't find this image anywhere) but generally, while the rest of the world already did not care anymore, WE should have supported the project all along !
Everybody & his sister was badmouthing it, arguing all day long about stock configs when the point was, precisely, that it was an AMIGA, stripped-down basic computer but already heavily compatible, AND expandable for those in need !
I cannot believe that we DARED to state, page after page, that it was slower than a stock 1200, It was a *prototype*, he-llO !
Of COURSE it would have worked great, It was not the 1st 030 machine C=/AT would have produced, and to my knowledge, NO machine that they released was crappy. So there was no reason for this one to be. Yet in EVERY mag I read, long statements were made about the current state of the CEBIT machine, when it was basically pointless.
And if only that, but NO, they also heavily critisized every choice they made, when in fact, they did'nt had any practical alternative. I mean, all this (lack of) MMU talk, when if you needed one, you'd also probably want more horsepower, and by a accel board with a MMU 68k CPU !!
I mean, and it would be the bottomline I think : how smarter did we think we were than the guys in charge of this project ?
Everytime I wonder, what if the (Amiga) press would have been enthusiastic, what if the dev would have been completed, how many of those babies would be around now. I'm sure that it would have rivaled the 1200, I mean, everybody here, that has built a towered 1200 would have bought one, for start. there would be walkers everywhere. Boards for it called runner, EPO, modems&NICs called Walkie-talkie, and many smart configs.
I feel bad for having followed the trend and dismiss the machine, when I finally, only now, realise that the whole project was good, and that it already had a fair share of man-years development time. I feel bad for all the guys involved in it.
So long, walkie.
I'm sorry about all this fuss, and wouldlike to excuse myself for my weird english (here we say "laborious") but I needed to unload that bag.
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Man! This stuff happened a long time ago.
You need to let it go now! 8-)
I hope your confession has helped... :-)
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I remember saving money for buying the Walker
back in the 90's...but it never showed-up and
I bought an A1200 instead.
The Walker was a really cool machine!
:-)
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xaccrocheur wrote:
Everytime I see the walker some part of my body gets cold.
Which one?
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moto
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@AmiDude : Hey, I just realised that I may have been a little too radical in saying that *everybody* dismissed it.
*I* did.
*I* played smartass.
And yes, Colin, it does feel better now.
I don't know, today, I had to say that. Now let's move on.
(the part of my body that gets cold is never the same, hard to say it when like me you're not *really* speaking english :roll: )
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xaccrocheur wrote:
(the part of my body that gets cold is never the same
Maybe you should see a doctor... :lol:
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moto
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I saw the Walker live at WOA Hammersmith (forget what year.. But it was the last one at Olympia)
It looked really kewl.
The case, of course was radical for the time.. Comments such as its a digital hoover etc were bandied around.. But with a little work that case could have been awesome.
I wanted to buy it right there and then.
iirc icame as standard with a 060 cpu as well.
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I never liked the case design much but I was more interested in what was inside. In any event, rehousing the thing would have been no more difficult than any other miggy...
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The_Editor wrote:
iirc icame as standard with a 060 cpu as well.
I thought it was EC030 @ 40MHz soldered on the board? Provided the CPU was upgradable that's no real problem. And a lot more grunt than the bare A1200 would have had ;-)
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Karlos wrote:
The_Editor wrote:
iirc icame as standard with a 060 cpu as well.
I thought it was EC030 @ 40MHz soldered on the board? Provided the CPU was upgradable that's no real problem. And a lot more grunt than the bare A1200 would have had ;-)
T'was exactly that. the 060 was *far* not out at that time
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get over it
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xaccrocheur wrote:
Hi, just wanted to point what started as a comment (http://www.amiga.org/gallery/photo.php?lid=1352&com_id=49003&com_rootid=49003&com_mode=flat&com_order=0#comment49003), and ended up in "my own private confession, and public apology to the walker project team"
Mind you, it's a quite old hat. No news in this rant, just the expression of my sadness. Feel free to ignore it, as we all did with the walker.
Walker prototype
Everytime I see the walker some part of my body gets cold.
I vividly remember when it was unveiled. The way I see it, WE Amigans killed it.
It was a GREAT machine. It would have been the last really KickAss 68k platform, introducing the cross-platform HW compatibility with the PCI bus, that were amazingly overlooked (is that the right word ? I mean that nobody seemed to care - even me - about this bus, when it was THE THING !) In fact, it's only when the first PCI busboards were produced, WAY after that, such as the prometheus, that I realised my mistake : Those guys@Amiga had figured it all !
The case was *great*, it was the early rendering of what a friendly 'puter should look like way before the IMac, AND it was expandable as hell, unlike the IMac, already modern-equipped (CD-Rom) , And hey, it EXISTED !
And we ranted it away, had some good laughs (remember "try it on the floor" ? I can't find this image anywhere) but generally, while the rest of the world already did not care anymore, WE should have supported the project all along !
Everybody & his sister was badmouthing it, arguing all day long about stock configs when the point was, precisely, that it was an AMIGA, stripped-down basic computer but already heavily compatible, AND expandable for those in need !
I cannot believe that we DARED to state, page after page, that it was slower than a stock 1200, It was a *prototype*, he-llO !
Of COURSE it would have worked great, It was not the 1st 030 machine C=/AT would have produced, and to my knowledge, NO machine that they released was crappy. So there was no reason for this one to be. Yet in EVERY mag I read, long statements were made about the current state of the CEBIT machine, when it was basically pointless.
And if only that, but NO, they also heavily critisized every choice they made, when in fact, they did'nt had any practical alternative. I mean, all this (lack of) MMU talk, when if you needed one, you'd also probably want more horsepower, and by a accel board with a MMU 68k CPU !!
I mean, and it would be the bottomline I think : how smarter did we think we were than the guys in charge of this project ?
Everytime I wonder, what if the (Amiga) press would have been enthusiastic, what if the dev would have been completed, how many of those babies would be around now. I'm sure that it would have rivaled the 1200, I mean, everybody here, that has built a towered 1200 would have bought one, for start. there would be walkers everywhere. Boards for it called runner, EPO, modems&NICs called Walkie-talkie, and many smart configs.
I feel bad for having followed the trend and dismiss the machine, when I finally, only now, realise that the whole project was good, and that it already had a fair share of man-years development time. I feel bad for all the guys involved in it.
So long, walkie.
I'm sorry about all this fuss, and wouldlike to excuse myself for my weird english (here we say "laborious") but I needed to unload that bag.
Please tell us you had been drinking before you wrote that
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Was it merlancia who bought the rights to Walker?
Maybe they will do something with it after all.
Walker case
PPC board with minimig FPGA
Choice of morphos and OS4 both with minimig extensions
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Karlos wrote:
I never liked the case design much but I was more interested in what was inside. In any event, rehousing the thing would have been no more difficult than any other miggy...
Much easier, it was a standard AT form Board.
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@ Karlos ..
Ithink your right ..
thinking back, I recall asking if my blizzard 060 would be able to fit on a connector as I had paid a whopping £600 for it and another £100 for the SCSI controller. I remarked that if I had to buy another card they could stick the walker up their jacksies !!
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I actually think the parent company going belly-up had more to do with the Walker's demise than any Amiga Community member comparing the case to a vacuum cleaner.
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I agree, I think it was more to do with the Parent company. Let's face it we're not really that much for a bunch of aesthetics are we? We're more interested in the gubbins that go inside the machine. If it was Amiga there would've been a market no matter how mad it looked. Mind you I can see similarities in some of Apple's designs...
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Merlancia will never do anything with Walker. I believe you are correct that Ryan (he is NOT a doctor)owns the prototype but I don't know about the design.
In any event, Merlancia, such as it was touted to the community, no longer exists. They closed shop long ago. You can still find some of their excess inventory on ebay however...look for Kristina Kreations (Ryan's mother).
Regards,
Ltstanfo
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MayhemMaybe wrote:
I actually think the parent company going belly-up had more to do with the Walker's demise than any Amiga Community member comparing the case to a vacuum cleaner.
I tend to agree with you but at the time, AT was very surprised at the "negative" press that the Walker received. While there were certainly many in the community who loved the concept (and the looks), the AT "Hoover" did in fact turn a lot of people off. I recall at one AMIGA in St. Louis show where the question was asked if it would be possible to buy just the motherboard and not the case.
In any regard, the Walker is dead, along with another worthy "could have been", the Boxer (which I greatly preferred over the Walker).
Regards,
Ltstanfo